Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: This episode of Monster Talk deals with some explicit sexual
Speaker 2: topics and may not be suitable for all listeners. You've
Speaker 2: probably heard or used the word gargantuan to describe something large.
Speaker 2: Did you know that that word is a literary illusion.
Speaker 2: It comes from a set of stories by Francois Rebelae
Speaker 2: about two giants called Gargantua and Pantagrule, first published in
Speaker 2: fifteen thirty two. In these satirical stories, Gargantua, one of
Speaker 2: the giants, sets up a monastery of Philima. And here
Speaker 2: is how it's described. In all their rule and strictest
Speaker 2: tie of their order, there was but this one clause
Speaker 2: to be observed.
Speaker 3: Do what thou.
Speaker 2: Wilt Philima means will. In nineteen o four, a man
Speaker 2: named Alistair Crowley published what he claims to be divinely
Speaker 2: received wisdom as the Book of the Law, a publication
Speaker 2: which has become famously well known by shorthand reference to
Speaker 2: its similar command.
Speaker 3: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Speaker 2: One work of famous literary satire, the other a holy
Speaker 2: book of the magical religion of Thelema. Make of that
Speaker 2: what thou wilt. In this episode, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about a man who gave himself more titles than a
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies Italian horror film, including The Beast six sixty six.
Speaker 2: His real name was Alistair Crowley.
Speaker 4: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: A giant, hairy creature.
Speaker 4: Part eight, Part Matt in Luckness, a twenty four a
Speaker 4: mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland if
Speaker 4: a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 1: Morenster Talk.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith. We're almost finished with my currently planned series
Speaker 2: on magic. I still want to talk about Jack Parsons
Speaker 2: and about Margaret Murray's book The Witch Cult in Western Europe,
Speaker 2: but we'll be back to more direct monster coverage first.
Speaker 2: Though to be fair, there are many who would call
Speaker 2: the subject of this episode a real monster. We'll dig
Speaker 2: into some of the biographical material on Crowley in this episode,
Speaker 2: but if you check the show notes, there's some fantastic
Speaker 2: links if you're interested in seeing.
Speaker 3: Some contemporary coverage of his life.
Speaker 2: There's an interesting documentary from the BBC that was part
Speaker 2: of a four part series called Masters of Darkness that
Speaker 2: covered Crowley in one episode. A fairly complete version of
Speaker 2: that's on.
Speaker 3: YouTube, and I put links to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: And there's a page with digitized copies of the tabloid
Speaker 2: coverage of his various exploits, some of which are shocking
Speaker 2: even today, or at least the claims are. He's famously
Speaker 2: been called the wickedest man in the world, and it
Speaker 2: seems to me like he would have just reveled in
Speaker 2: such epithets because infamy was as good as fame to him.
Speaker 2: He was a writer, a poet, a cult leader, and
Speaker 2: by many accounts, a total and complete bastard. In the documentary,
Speaker 2: a few career highlights show up. For example, he was
Speaker 2: a very good mountain climber, but then he had a
Speaker 2: scandalous episode where he allegedly refused to help his companions
Speaker 2: after an avalanche because of some falling out that they
Speaker 2: had had. He bought a house on the coast of
Speaker 2: Lochness called Bileskin House and conducted a magical ritual there
Speaker 2: which was supposed to give him access to his guardian angel,
Speaker 2: but which required first to summon princes from hell, and
Speaker 2: then he didn't finish that ceremony, which led to rumors
Speaker 2: and legends about what failing to complete such a ritual
Speaker 2: could lead to. In the nineteen twenties, he went to
Speaker 2: Sicily and started a church based on his religious teachings,
Speaker 2: but soon was deported because of the scandalous accusations that
Speaker 2: his cult had conducted bestiality, sacrifices, and some of the
Speaker 2: practices which had led to the death of one young member.
Speaker 2: He used up lovers and left them destroyed, and he
Speaker 2: spent much of his life enslaved by drug addictions. Yet
Speaker 2: somehow he's seemed by many as a kind of hero
Speaker 2: whose intent to harness the power of human will is
Speaker 2: despite the failings of the man who brought the teachings
Speaker 2: a path to a fulfilling life. The problem I have
Speaker 2: with talking about Crowley, especially from a position of wanting
Speaker 2: to be historically accurate, is that I can't tell what
Speaker 2: portion of the stuff written about him is true and
Speaker 2: what is complete bullshit. It is deeply frustrating. The majority
Speaker 2: of the news cover's ridiculous missmash of rumors and allegations,
Speaker 2: and is not very different from the news stories from
Speaker 2: tabloids today. I can tell you this, though his influence
Speaker 2: after his death has grown because of the fascination that
Speaker 2: many in the entertainment business feel for him. Many musicians
Speaker 2: have referenced him. Ozzy Osbourne's song Mister Crowley, though it
Speaker 2: mispronounces his name, is just one example. Jimmy Page of
Speaker 2: led Zeppelin bought Bileskinhause and owned it for several years
Speaker 2: and apparently owns a lot of Crowley's writings. In addition
Speaker 2: to many other magical tomes, Crowley influenced other magical thinkers
Speaker 2: as well, and his religion lives on today. The counterculture
Speaker 2: of the sixties and seventies seemed to consider him a
Speaker 2: natural fit, though very little of Croley's life comes across
Speaker 2: as particularly groovy. But let's get onto this interview, which
Speaker 2: is the third and final part of my interview with
Speaker 2: John L. Crow Hopefully, across these three episodes we will
Speaker 2: have provided some context to understand what was going on
Speaker 2: in the world to produce a man like Alister Crowley
Speaker 2: Morenstertle Okay, So, in our previous discussion, we were talking
Speaker 2: about the rise of esotericism and occultism in Western civilization,
Speaker 2: and we talked about theosophy and briefly about the Golden Dawn,
Speaker 2: and our goal here is to guide into a discussion
Speaker 2: about Alistair Crowley, and well, let's can we maybe could
Speaker 2: you give us a few biographical details.
Speaker 3: About him and then how he gets involved in this movement.
Speaker 4: Sure, he grew up very upper middle class. His father
Speaker 4: had a beer brewing business, Curly Beer, and.
Speaker 5: He basically had a.
Speaker 4: Strict environment because although his parents were brewers, they were
Speaker 4: part of a very conservative Protestant denomination called the Plymouth Brotherhood.
Speaker 2: A quick editorial correction, it's actually the Plymouth Brethren and
Speaker 2: a link to more information about them as in the
Speaker 2: show notes.
Speaker 4: And they stopped him from being able to participate in
Speaker 4: normal childhood activities with toys and playing with friends and all.
Speaker 1: Of these things that we come to back.
Speaker 4: To children do for normal socialization. Instead, he had a
Speaker 4: more tumultuous of an experience.
Speaker 5: He was very.
Speaker 4: Dedicated to his father, and his father died when he
Speaker 4: was young. That caused a financial and social crisis within
Speaker 4: his family. He ended up living with some relatives he
Speaker 4: had negative experiences with, and then when off was went
Speaker 4: to school and again had negative experiences there. So he
Speaker 4: had a very difficult childhood, and through that he came
Speaker 4: to identify a lot of it with Christianity. So he
Speaker 4: started to rebel against the kind of Protestant strict religion
Speaker 4: and instead he said, well, if the Polymouth Brotherhood were
Speaker 4: about God and Jesus rejecting the devil and being very conservaive,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do the exact opposite. I'm going to
Speaker 4: embrace the diabolic and I'm going to embrace hedonism. And
Speaker 4: so we could see by the time he is in
Speaker 4: college that he is indulging this lifestyle. He's starting to
Speaker 4: become educated in philosophy and science.
Speaker 1: He also has an interest.
Speaker 4: In poetry, in literature, he is also interested in theater.
Speaker 4: So he's becoming very well rounded, getting a very good
Speaker 4: education that his economic status allowed. And so he ultimately
Speaker 4: rejects graduation, becomes a poet and gets involved in various
Speaker 4: kinds of activities, and one of them is the Golden Dawn.
Speaker 4: Through a friend, he is introduced to the Golden Dawn
Speaker 4: and he attends, and he's by this point has a
Speaker 4: very significant interest in esoteric subjects occultism. And we should
Speaker 4: also look at the timeline with theosophy beginning in eighteen
Speaker 4: seventy five, and spiritualism, mesmerism, new thought. All of these
Speaker 4: traditions being established or coming into being. It was a
Speaker 4: very potent environment for him to take.
Speaker 1: These ideas and run with it.
Speaker 4: So he's encountered these esoteric and occult ideas from a
Speaker 4: variety of places, including the Kabbala and so forth.
Speaker 5: So when he's introduced to the.
Speaker 4: Golden Dawn, he's very, very apt, very eager, and he
Speaker 4: begins to excel in the Golden don it's also here,
Speaker 4: after a couple of years, that he meets Alan Bennett,
Speaker 4: who was considered the second best magician in the Golden
Speaker 4: Dawn next to Mather's one of the founders, and they
Speaker 4: get along very well. Craley sees an opportunity because Bennett
Speaker 4: comes he's very ill and comes from a very poor family.
Speaker 4: Curly says, look, if you give me teachings in magic,
Speaker 4: I will put you up and give you a place
Speaker 4: to live and give you resources so that you can
Speaker 4: practice magic.
Speaker 5: And so they do.
Speaker 4: They get a flat, and so we see in eighteen
Speaker 4: ninety nine they're living together. Craley is getting lessons from Bennett,
Speaker 4: and Bennett's.
Speaker 5: Health is on the mend to some degree.
Speaker 4: So it worked out very well for them in these
Speaker 4: last eighteen nineties. But already here we see that Bennett
Speaker 4: had an interest in Eastern traditions.
Speaker 1: He was a member.
Speaker 4: Of the Theosophical Society early in the eighteen nineties, and
Speaker 4: so eventually Bennett will leave the Golden Dawn. And in
Speaker 4: that same time frame, when Bennett leaves in nineteen hundred,
Speaker 4: Crowley is worked his way up to the Inner Order,
Speaker 4: but the members of the lodge don't want him to
Speaker 4: enter the Inner Order, and so that we have this
Speaker 4: huge personality conflict.
Speaker 2: But this is he's coming out of a position of
Speaker 2: being upper middle class and from a university time period, right,
Speaker 2: so he's already he's like a seeker and seeking education
Speaker 2: in a classical since at the same time, is that
Speaker 2: what we're saying.
Speaker 4: Well, he definitely was interested in being educated, and he
Speaker 4: was very well read. He had access to lots of
Speaker 4: learning resources even before going to college, but he was
Speaker 4: coming from an environment that stressed education, so he was
Speaker 4: very literate. He read a lot, and he while in
Speaker 4: college he had access to philosophy and the sciences and literature,
Speaker 4: so he was participating in various degrees in both humanities,
Speaker 4: and what we would consider the STEM stuff, I mean
Speaker 4: within the context of the end of the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: But he was absorbed in these ideas and really expanding
Speaker 4: them because he wasn't limited in an ideology that said
Speaker 4: that there's no connection between these humanistic ideas and these
Speaker 4: scientific ideas. He was looking at them as part of
Speaker 4: a whole. And so one of the things that encumbers
Speaker 4: people and thinking about stuff today is they think, oh,
Speaker 4: I don't need humanities, I'm doing STEM. But they don't
Speaker 4: understand that minds in the world around us aren't categorized
Speaker 4: in kind of the disciplines. The way things manifest and
Speaker 4: influence and feet on one another are are a lot
Speaker 4: more fluid, and so the boundaries that we create discipline
Speaker 4: wise sometimes inhibit thinking.
Speaker 5: He was not participating in that.
Speaker 4: In fact, he was participating in a very unbounded thinking.
Speaker 4: So he would include esoteric knowledge and occultism along with
Speaker 4: literature and science and they were all one big mix
Speaker 4: of ideas influences that he had no problem pulling together.
Speaker 3: So he's also.
Speaker 2: He's a he's at least bisexual, right, I mean, I.
Speaker 5: Think I think it's hard for us to.
Speaker 4: Deal with the fluidity of his sexuality using today's terms. Again,
Speaker 4: we very much are uncomfortable with things being undefined, so
Speaker 4: we have since since the sexual Revolution and feminism and
Speaker 4: all of this exposure to a variety of human sexual preferences,
Speaker 4: sexual practices, sexual modalities. People want to break it up
Speaker 4: into various kinds of categories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgien.
Speaker 4: That's fine, but when you start projecting those categories back
Speaker 4: into a time period in which they didn't exist, it
Speaker 4: becomes a little more dice. What we do know is
Speaker 4: that Crawley had love emotional love for men and women,
Speaker 4: and that he participated in sexual activities with men and women. Now,
Speaker 4: some people want to say he's gay and that he
Speaker 4: really wasn't into women, or that he was bisexual, or
Speaker 4: those debates. In many ways, fine if that's what people
Speaker 4: the direction they want to take it, But in some
Speaker 4: sense those categories are not helpful because they're trying to
Speaker 4: bring in the reel in or bracket or closed down
Speaker 4: his sexual activity. And the fact is he participated in
Speaker 4: a lot of different kinds of sexual activity with different
Speaker 4: people of different genders, so he.
Speaker 2: I guess, let me ask it this way, so I
Speaker 2: think one of the challenges I have is a modern
Speaker 2: un initiated reader or an interested party.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what to call myself.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about all this as it relates to magic.
Speaker 2: So a lot of times when I read about this stuff,
Speaker 2: it's craully participated in sexual rituals for magical purposes, and
Speaker 2: I don't know how that actually plays out as opposed
Speaker 2: to sexual encounters for merely hedonistic purposes or as part
Speaker 2: of long term relationships. There's all these different ways to
Speaker 2: sort of categorize sex acts. But I'm curious about how
Speaker 2: sex magic works because I keep seeing that phrase sex
Speaker 2: magic and sex magic rituals. I have no idea what
Speaker 2: it means. I don't understand. What you know is that
Speaker 2: like the magic is released through orgasm. I really don't
Speaker 2: understand at all. So, like, if you have any insight
Speaker 2: to that, I would really be curious about what that means.
Speaker 4: Well, sex magic has a large variety of manifestations. And
Speaker 4: if you think about what are the areas of human
Speaker 4: activity that have the most intensity emotional connection, If you
Speaker 4: want to talk in terms of energy build up, the
Speaker 4: the largest pools of energy and engagement of an individual
Speaker 4: or individuals, and that would certainly include, if not be
Speaker 4: led by sexuality. And so participation in sexual activity in
Speaker 4: a ritual context is simply using the various methods of
Speaker 4: sex engagement, and that could be anything from masturbation to
Speaker 4: intercourse of both men and women or women together or
Speaker 4: men together or as a group of very genders. All
Speaker 4: of these kinds of techniques are means to move consciousness
Speaker 4: or move energy, or to consecrate an object to one's
Speaker 4: wills or desires, or to create a context for g
Speaker 4: nosis or access to a transcendent knowledge. So it really
Speaker 4: depends on what the goals are of the participants. It
Speaker 4: could be as mundane as you want something done, you
Speaker 4: create a talisman for it, and then to focus your
Speaker 4: will and notions about that and participate in mascipiatory activities
Speaker 4: and then with climax or something coming from that, bodily
Speaker 4: fluids those that consecrates the talisman. It could be as
Speaker 4: extensive as individuals participating in group sexuality and using bodily
Speaker 4: fluids or orgasm or the energy from it to consecrate
Speaker 4: things or to get an individual or multiple participants in
Speaker 4: a state of consciousness that are receptive to mystical experience
Speaker 4: or knowledge. It's just there's all kinds of different ways
Speaker 4: that it can participate. And some of the examples for
Speaker 4: Croley in his sex with Victor Neuberg is they had
Speaker 4: sex in the desert for during their times in which
Speaker 4: they were doing Anokian works and scrying in the ethers,
Speaker 4: and so they would use sexual intercourse to get Curley
Speaker 4: in a mystical state and so that he was more
Speaker 4: receptive and could participate in the scrying of Anokian.
Speaker 1: Ethers and so forth.
Speaker 4: So there's a large variety of activities that manifest sexually,
Speaker 4: and sex magic is basically harnessing those activities for magical ends.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: So it reminds me of we did an episode on homunculus,
Speaker 2: and the concept of trying to create some sort of
Speaker 2: life with a single person is typically the way I've
Speaker 2: read is a male right. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: there's any rituals for making a female based homunculus, but yeah,
Speaker 2: but there are.
Speaker 4: There are rituals of sexual intercourse between men and women
Speaker 4: to create homunculus. And if you think of the climax
Speaker 4: at a moment in which the male and female are
Speaker 4: come together preferably and simultaneous climax to create the material
Speaker 4: basis which then could be used as the grounding for
Speaker 4: the creation of a spiritual being one that the goal
Speaker 4: of that spiritual being's existence is the culmination of the
Speaker 4: will of the participants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's, uh, that'll tie into some
Speaker 2: stuff where we'll be looking at in the future, at
Speaker 2: least some of the stuff alleged to have been.
Speaker 3: The gold Jack Parsons for example, Right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: So that's exactly what's what Jack Parsons was was doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's it's really interesting. So the these uh
Speaker 2: but now do you know this this is this part
Speaker 2: of Eastern religion or is this part of Eastern tradition
Speaker 2: or is this part of something that's come out of
Speaker 2: these esoteric movements that they claim is part of an
Speaker 2: Eastern tradition that's not I I'm finding it hard to
Speaker 2: kind of reconcile what is absolutely, you know, being repurposed
Speaker 2: in what's being sort of created at hock for these
Speaker 2: other movements.
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure how to word that exactly. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 2: Like, what's legitimately part of Eastern tradition that they're repurposing
Speaker 2: and what is maybe just created from their own interest
Speaker 2: in trying to get these results.
Speaker 5: We don't know.
Speaker 4: The difficulty is, first of all, if you're talking specifically
Speaker 4: about sex magic, we're talking about a time period where
Speaker 4: people don't talk about sex that often, and when they do,
Speaker 4: they talk in veiled terms. So what is Eastern and
Speaker 4: what isn't Eastern really comes down to the claims of people,
Speaker 4: And there certainly are claims that the knowledge that they have.
Speaker 4: For instance, somebody involved in spiritualism and her Brotherhood of
Speaker 4: Lights and pbe Randolph. He was a mixed race spiritualists
Speaker 4: who also claim to travel in the Middle East and
Speaker 4: become initiated and had sex magic rights and used hallucinogenic
Speaker 4: substances like hashish as part of magical ritual. Those claims
Speaker 4: are made or similar ones by other people.
Speaker 5: We don't know.
Speaker 4: It is certainly not part of the exoteric practices of
Speaker 4: Eastern religions. Probably the one exception are high level tantric
Speaker 4: practices that participate in sexual intercourse in tantric Hinduism and
Speaker 4: tentric Buddhism. But what people miss there is that the
Speaker 4: goals of those intercourse participations is not orgasm. In fact,
Speaker 4: orgasm would be considered failure in tantric practice. Instead, the
Speaker 4: goal is to maintain engagement in the sexual activity while
Speaker 4: building up energy and then taking that energy and using
Speaker 4: it for other means, versus releasing it in orgasm. So
Speaker 4: when when Westerners talk about tantra, they usually have it
Speaker 4: very very wrong in terms of its resemblance of Eastern practice.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean Western forms of tantra are wrong, they're
Speaker 4: just different. And that's that's the one thing that we
Speaker 4: should also keep in mind when we're looking at origins
Speaker 4: or looking for origins.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: This is what this teaching is from this group and
Speaker 4: what they where they got it from, could be invented,
Speaker 4: could be an amalgam of different sources, or both.
Speaker 1: In some sense, it.
Speaker 4: Doesn't really matter. What matters is what they do with
Speaker 4: it and what they claim about it.
Speaker 2: So I didn't want to take us down too big
Speaker 2: of a rabbit hole, ye i am. I was just
Speaker 2: very curious about that because I read a lot in
Speaker 2: preparation for these interviews, and nothing really broke it out
Speaker 2: very specifically. I was a little curious about what was
Speaker 2: sex magic and sexual ritual is an easy thing to say,
Speaker 2: but that's a broad category that could be a lot
Speaker 2: of things, so I didn't really know what was under
Speaker 2: the hood.
Speaker 4: It really is broad and there it is multifaceted. And
Speaker 4: there are some scholars who have spent a lot of
Speaker 4: time looking at this and looking at esoteric traditions and
Speaker 4: the transmission of various kinds of sex related religious practices
Speaker 4: and spiritual practices, and I don't claim to be one
Speaker 4: of those specialists, so I don't want to go too
Speaker 4: far down that subject. I think they would be better
Speaker 4: people to have on your show. But there is a
Speaker 4: lot there and it is very interesting, and it would
Speaker 4: and it does touch a lot on particularly Crowley and
Speaker 4: the OTO and also the other organizations in which Curley
Speaker 4: participated in his AA and his magical teachings and subsequent students,
Speaker 4: because Crawley was one who was adamant of positive correlation
Speaker 4: between magical practice and sexual activity, whereas on the opposite side,
Speaker 4: someone like Blovatski insisted on celibacy, so no sexual practice
Speaker 4: of any kind, including no masturbation, so that the person
Speaker 4: remains pure and focused and is not distracted by lust,
Speaker 4: sexual desire, or physical engagement of sexual acts, and so
Speaker 4: you'll actually see people within theosophy who were married stop
Speaker 4: having sex, or people getting married and having celibate marriages,
Speaker 4: or not even getting married ever because they don't want
Speaker 4: to participate in that kind of activity. And Blovatski herself
Speaker 4: claimed never to have consummated her two marriages.
Speaker 2: Huh, I've been married for like eighteen years.
Speaker 3: I think our anniversary's tomorrow, So it's not my way.
Speaker 2: Okay, say no, honey, It's an abstinence for sexual magical powers.
Speaker 3: Totally cool. So yeah, I don't think I could sell that, so.
Speaker 5: You know, most people can't.
Speaker 4: And theosophy what they said, especially during the time of Blovatski,
Speaker 4: was you know what, that's okay, get married and participate
Speaker 4: the best you can. Just understand that your inability to
Speaker 4: discipline yourself in that sexual sense means that in this
Speaker 4: lifetime you are not.
Speaker 1: Going to reach the highest levels of spiritual development.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I guess it's the price I have to pay.
Speaker 4: But on the other side, you know, you get people
Speaker 4: who are practicing Crowley systems, like you're never going to
Speaker 4: get to the highest levels of spiritual development unless you
Speaker 4: participate in certain forms of sexual activity.
Speaker 3: So it really.
Speaker 4: Just depends on the system and you know what its
Speaker 4: view on the body and desire and all of.
Speaker 1: These kinds of things are.
Speaker 4: And that's why focusing on questions on the body and
Speaker 4: how the body is constructed and the use of the
Speaker 4: body in a magical and esoteric practice becomes really helpful
Speaker 4: in kind of getting into the ideas that are underlying it.
Speaker 4: Because the body is bad, then all the wants and
Speaker 4: needs of the body become demonized i e. Sexual intercourse.
Speaker 4: Whereas if the body is seen as ultimately good and
Speaker 4: is your connection to the world, then things of its
Speaker 4: needs and its participation in the world through sexual activity
Speaker 4: and other activities, then those are inherently good. So notions
Speaker 4: of the body, it's construction and the overall orientation to
Speaker 4: it becomes a prime indicator of what the ideologies of
Speaker 4: that organization or that system are.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So with Crowley, he's over the course of like since
Speaker 2: he's he's left us, he's gotten this sort of legendary status.
Speaker 3: He shows up in pop culture. You see him in The.
Speaker 5: Black Sabbath.
Speaker 2: Is just Ozzy Osbourn the mister Crowley song. I think
Speaker 2: that's although he's his Crowley, But I think that's wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know it is a Black Sabbath song here
Speaker 4: so shows up and I think, I mean, there's lots
Speaker 4: of groups. I mean, Black Sabbath and Ozzy are the
Speaker 4: most obvious making a reference to him.
Speaker 3: But to b Paige is a huge fan. Tov.
Speaker 2: Paige goes on to buy Bileskin House and that for
Speaker 2: a while, which is where Crowley did some of his rituals.
Speaker 2: And so he's got this huge, maybe outsized pop culture
Speaker 2: presence outside of the.
Speaker 3: Direct religious side of him.
Speaker 2: So like, in one sense, most people know him as
Speaker 2: sort of this dark figure in Western culture. And I
Speaker 2: think that's only dark in contrasted with Judeo Christian views, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how dark he is within
Speaker 2: magical tradition.
Speaker 4: Well, well, you know, it's funny because he did participate
Speaker 4: and publicly announced his engagement in various kinds of sexual activities,
Speaker 4: various kinds of magical practices and so forth. And you're right,
Speaker 4: by more traditional or conservative Judeo Christian morality, these things
Speaker 4: are seen as bad, which is also why he got,
Speaker 4: you know, the yellow journalism label of the most wicked man.
Speaker 4: But one has to wonder when you start stacking up
Speaker 4: what he did in a larger context to people who
Speaker 4: have participated or engineered genocide, and sadly, in the twentieth century,
Speaker 4: we've had many political leaders cause or facilitate genocide. In
Speaker 4: comparison to that, I don't know how wicked he is.
Speaker 4: He never killed anybody. He never caused the death of
Speaker 4: groups of people, or caused you know, whole territories or
Speaker 4: whatever to be destroyed, or mass incineration of human beings.
Speaker 2: Right, it's almost comical to say it compared to some
Speaker 2: of the sort of things that happened in the latter
Speaker 2: half of the twentieth century, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, to
Speaker 2: say you're the wickedt man of the world. And you know,
Speaker 2: basically that goes down to you know, breaking as many
Speaker 2: of the commandments as you can, that sort of thing
Speaker 2: that you know, within that context, yes, wicked, but within
Speaker 2: the sort of.
Speaker 3: I don't want to get into moral relativism.
Speaker 2: As you point out, he did not kill millions of people.
Speaker 2: He didn't so much on economic damage to people.
Speaker 3: He just.
Speaker 4: I would go so far to say that if you
Speaker 4: looked at what happened over the over a weekend in Hollywood,
Speaker 4: sex with multiple partners outside of marriage of both genders,
Speaker 4: indulgence in magical rituals, and inclusion of drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that happened. So I mean that's what he did.
Speaker 4: Okay, at the time, that was so you know, taboo
Speaker 4: that Yeah, he got.
Speaker 5: That kind of label.
Speaker 4: But I mean in the modern world, I don't know
Speaker 4: if it's good or bad. Some might argue either way,
Speaker 4: but that kind of activity that got him that label
Speaker 4: is so common these days, right.
Speaker 2: I think we've talked about on the show before and
Speaker 2: on the conversation we had outside of this interview with
Speaker 2: my belief that if he were alive today, he would
Speaker 2: fit right in with the sort of Kardashian social media world.
Speaker 3: He liked to be in the newspaper.
Speaker 2: He seemed to like to sort of manage his image
Speaker 2: quite a bit.
Speaker 4: So he did well, he did early on, I think,
Speaker 4: you know, as he got older, and we have to remember,
Speaker 4: this is a guy that had a public presence for decades.
Speaker 4: It's not like he was a shot in the dark
Speaker 4: who kind of appeared in the you know, the early
Speaker 4: twentieth century, was a figure of the moment and then disappeared.
Speaker 4: He was in the public eye across both sides of
Speaker 4: the Atlantic in the English speaking.
Speaker 1: World, four of decades.
Speaker 4: His activities, his writing, his books, his painting, all of these,
Speaker 4: his theatrical activities and his ceremonial magic, and his political ideas,
Speaker 4: all of that were continually being discussed in the newspapers
Speaker 4: of his day. And so we have decades of his exposure.
Speaker 4: And he was very sensationalistic, very media attention grabbing in
Speaker 4: his twenties and early thirties that I think later in
Speaker 4: his life he found became more of an impediment to
Speaker 4: his spiritual teachings or the goals that he had as
Speaker 4: being a religious prophet were hindered in many cases by
Speaker 4: the image and persona he had put forward in his
Speaker 4: younger years.
Speaker 2: So most of our listeners are going to know, uh,
Speaker 2: let do what thou wilt be the whole of the law, right,
Speaker 2: They're going to know that line.
Speaker 3: But what what exactly does that mean?
Speaker 2: And what was the goal of his his breakaway religion
Speaker 2: to Oto?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, the Oto existed before Crowley. Okay,
Speaker 4: this was this was one of those fringe Masonic groups
Speaker 4: that was started.
Speaker 5: It was started in Germany.
Speaker 4: There's a number of founders, and probably the most prominent
Speaker 4: is uh Royce and then Kilner, and so they had
Speaker 4: this very underdeveloped Masonic group and one of the things
Speaker 4: that they included in it was.
Speaker 1: Sex magic.
Speaker 4: And so when Royce became acquainted with Crowley, he offered
Speaker 4: the opportunity to be head of the OTO of the
Speaker 4: English speaking world, and Curley accepted.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 4: Within that context, Crowley had already received his prophetic channeling
Speaker 4: of a Book of the Law. Now, the context in
Speaker 4: which it was received is frequently debated. He claimed basically
Speaker 4: that there was a preter natural presence who dictated it
Speaker 4: to him while he was in Egypt, and that this
Speaker 4: took place over the course of three days. But again
Speaker 4: the details of this changed slightly over time, and so
Speaker 4: it's not worth getting bogged down in it.
Speaker 5: In the English speaking OTO.
Speaker 4: He adopted his book the Book of the Law as
Speaker 4: a foundation of the English OTO. He reworked the initiations
Speaker 4: that he got to include this Book of the Law,
Speaker 4: which has a system he called Thelema, which means will
Speaker 4: in Greek. And so it is within that context he
Speaker 4: started propagating the ideas of the Lima within the OTO.
Speaker 4: But he also started another group, one modeled very much
Speaker 4: after the Golden Dawn and even preceding his involvement with
Speaker 4: the OTO that he called the AA. And what that
Speaker 4: AA stands for is variable and depends on people's levels
Speaker 4: of initiation and.
Speaker 1: Knowledge, so I won't even again go there.
Speaker 4: Each one of these subjects can become very very deep
Speaker 4: and take a long tangent, but that one was very
Speaker 4: much a thelemic initiatory group where he's taking the Golden
Speaker 4: Dawn system, taking Thalma and his ideas about magic that developed.
Speaker 1: And that's the one that.
Speaker 4: These two groups are evolving independently but overlapping in the
Speaker 4: sense that the memberships of one are frequently also in
Speaker 4: the other, and so so there's no Church of Fleema
Speaker 4: per se in the OTO, because the OTO is a
Speaker 4: Masonic group doing Masonic like rites. You have your magical group,
Speaker 4: the AA. And eventually Crowley also participates in getting ordained
Speaker 4: within the Gnostic Catholic Church. And we should also understand
Speaker 4: that just as there are all of these fringe kind
Speaker 4: of Masonic groups within the notions of Apostolic succession coming
Speaker 4: out of the church, there's all of these Apostolic groups
Speaker 4: and for people who don't know what that is. According
Speaker 4: to the Roman Catholic Church, Jesus appointed Peter to be
Speaker 4: the person that the church is founded on seeph it's
Speaker 4: the wrong. And so all of the bishops that come
Speaker 4: out of the Catholic Church go through a physical laying
Speaker 4: on of hands that put them in what is called
Speaker 4: apostolic succession. And so there's this long continuous chain of
Speaker 4: making people bishops, and that there was a physical interaction
Speaker 4: between two people, one that had that interaction previously and
Speaker 4: the new one who has that one. And once that's done,
Speaker 4: it can never be undone. But there have been people
Speaker 4: who were in the church got apostolic succession, but then
Speaker 4: we're thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church. Well, they
Speaker 4: still have apostolic succession. They were bishops, and they theoretically
Speaker 4: can pass it on and they do. So you get
Speaker 4: these lines of apostolic succession outside of the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 4: The Church frowns upon this, but they can't deny the
Speaker 4: continuity of these lines. And the participants document it, you know,
Speaker 4: saying so and so consecrated so and so at this
Speaker 4: date and this location, et cetera. But then you have
Speaker 4: other people who are claiming they were consecrated without any documentation.
Speaker 5: And then finally you also have.
Speaker 4: Systems of apostolic succession in which it doesn't trace itself
Speaker 4: to the Catholic Church, but it traces itself to a
Speaker 4: mystical experience of where Jesus appears and gives somebody apostolic
Speaker 4: succession and restarts a line that was either lost or
Speaker 4: didn't exist. And one of those lines is the Gnosta
Speaker 4: Catholic Church. And there is a mystical experience that a
Speaker 4: French person has and they start align and so you
Speaker 4: get this kind of convergence of all these different lines.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I point out, one of these
Speaker 4: kinds of restarts is also in found in Mormonism. So
Speaker 4: this is another tradition that has the priesthood of the Mechisldic.
Speaker 4: But that one was reconstituted by Jesus to Joseph Smith.
Speaker 4: So this is not an uncommon practice. It is one
Speaker 4: though that you either have it within or outside of
Speaker 4: the church. And so we see it happening to Croley
Speaker 4: and he creates a Gnostic Catholic Church. And I'll also
Speaker 4: note that the Old Catholic Church, which is another Gnostic
Speaker 4: one was integrated into theosophy with Leadbeater, and they created
Speaker 4: the Liberal Catholic Church through that Gnostic progression, and that
Speaker 4: exists today.
Speaker 3: I've heard of that. I didn't know what it was. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
Speaker 4: So you have this connection again with this fringe Apostolic
Speaker 4: succession and these Gnostic churches. And there's numerous Gnostic churches
Speaker 4: that exist today that are arising from claims of Apostolic succession,
Speaker 4: coming either from lines coming from the Catholic Church or
Speaker 4: through these other kinds of mystical experiences. So there are
Speaker 4: three independent things ultimately with Croley, the Oto his Aa,
Speaker 4: and the Gnostic Catholic Church, and all of them incorporate
Speaker 4: Thelema in some way or another.
Speaker 2: So what's Croley's goal with Theleima? What's he trying to
Speaker 2: accomplish here?
Speaker 4: He's trying to spread it as a world.
Speaker 3: Religion, Okay. And then what's it like?
Speaker 2: I mean, what are what are the tenets of Thelma?
Speaker 2: What is how does it compare to other religions.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing that is at the core of
Speaker 4: Thelema is it accentuates the individual over the group. And
Speaker 4: this is actually one of the things that is very
Speaker 4: hard for a lot of people to accept about that
Speaker 4: tradition is that the individual is empowered to the level
Speaker 4: that their spiritual will, their goals, their reason for being
Speaker 4: trumps everything else. So if you look at most religious systems,
Speaker 4: it's about the religion itself and the individual sacrificing themselves,
Speaker 4: their will, their desire, turning it over to God's will
Speaker 4: or something like that. Crowley, being someone who was very
Speaker 4: interested in exemplifying the individual, has a system in which
Speaker 4: the individual comes first.
Speaker 1: So the individual's.
Speaker 4: Will, their goals, what they're trying to accomplish in their lives,
Speaker 4: and on a spiritual, transcendent, gnostic, or even just mundane level,
Speaker 4: becomes the first and foremost consideration. That's why do what
Speaker 4: thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, right,
Speaker 4: It's that will of the end. Vidual is totalizing. Everything
Speaker 4: else is subsumed within the will.
Speaker 5: Now, it may.
Speaker 4: Actually be the will of the individual to make sacrifices
Speaker 4: to subvert what they want to the good of a group,
Speaker 4: but they have to make that choice. It's not an
Speaker 4: assumed and it's not a system that says if you're
Speaker 4: being selfish and putting the self first, then you're bad. Right.
Speaker 4: That's that's how it is in so many other Abrahamic traditions, Right,
Speaker 4: individual has to subsume to the will of God or
Speaker 4: the group, or a least the opposite. And so that that's
Speaker 4: the basis of do what that will. Now, that doesn't
Speaker 4: mean do what you want, because doing what you want
Speaker 4: is a very kind of whimsical influenced in so many
Speaker 4: different ways. Right, You're sitting there and watching TV and
Speaker 4: an ad comes on for some type of food or
Speaker 4: swede or some activity or something like that, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: that looks good.
Speaker 1: Oh, I want to do that.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what want levels are at will is
Speaker 4: a much more fundamental basis.
Speaker 1: It's the core of what you are and what you
Speaker 1: are living for.
Speaker 4: It's much more subtle, it's more philosophical, and it's not
Speaker 4: so obvious. And so the rest of the system is
Speaker 4: to understand what your will is. So ceremonial magic is
Speaker 4: part of that process of discovering.
Speaker 5: What your will is.
Speaker 4: And part of that system is there is a being
Speaker 4: or entity of some kind named that he calls the
Speaker 4: Holy Guardian Angel, and the nature of that angel is
Speaker 4: frequently debate. Sometimes he talks about the angel as being
Speaker 4: a separate entity. Sometimes it's the Higher Self, sometimes it's both.
Speaker 5: So it's it's not clear to those outside.
Speaker 4: But supposedly those who have encountered their Holy Guardian Angel,
Speaker 4: that duality or that confusion is cleared up, and that
Speaker 4: being helps guide you as you come to understand what
Speaker 4: your will is.
Speaker 2: Over then that context, this would be something that would
Speaker 2: be unique to each participant. They would they would get
Speaker 2: their own personal guardian Angel if they wanted to go
Speaker 2: through that ritual.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 5: They don't get one.
Speaker 1: They have one.
Speaker 3: They have one, okay, But that doesn't contact.
Speaker 5: It right now.
Speaker 4: That could be contacting the higher self, like some portion
Speaker 4: of their consciousness that exists on a higher spiritual plane
Speaker 4: that could be contacting external entity. At one point, Curley
Speaker 4: identifies the being that dictated the Book of the Law
Speaker 4: to him as his Holy Guardian Angel. So is that
Speaker 4: being part of his mind and did he write it
Speaker 4: in a trance nature or is it a separate being
Speaker 4: that was in the room with him.
Speaker 1: Dictating it to him.
Speaker 4: These are some of the debates about the context in
Speaker 4: which the book was received.
Speaker 3: Kind of what year was this that he sort of
Speaker 3: put this together and published.
Speaker 4: The book was received in nineteen oh four, Okay, but
Speaker 4: he didn't do anything with it for a few years,
Speaker 4: and in fact, he misplaced it for a while, and
Speaker 4: later he found it around nineteen oh seven, and it
Speaker 4: was then that he realized it had greater spiritual import
Speaker 4: than just some kind of trance writing. And that's when
Speaker 4: he started building his systems around it. So the first
Speaker 4: one was the AA, and then later the OTO and
Speaker 4: then the Gnosta Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So ultimately, over the course of his life he
Speaker 2: had published several works he had tried to build up
Speaker 2: these groups. What ends up happening like, are all of
Speaker 2: these groups that he started? Are they all still extant
Speaker 2: or did some of them survive some not? Or how
Speaker 2: what's his legacy looking like?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Well, I think you could look at his legacy in
Speaker 4: a lot of different ways. His influence as a whole
Speaker 4: is pretty tremendous. He looked at for his rebelliousness. He's
Speaker 4: looked at for his literary skill in both his poetry
Speaker 4: and his writings of novels and short stories. He's looked
Speaker 4: at as a kind of spiritual renegade or libertarian or
Speaker 4: hedonist by some so they see him as a model
Speaker 4: of rejecting the status quo and the system and instead
Speaker 4: making one's own way. Some look at him as a painter.
Speaker 4: Most recently some paintings of his has been discovered, but
Speaker 4: he also during the period that he lived in Germany
Speaker 4: in Berlin, that he did an art show there. So
Speaker 4: there was a number of different ways that people look
Speaker 4: at him and become inspired by him. Definitely within the
Speaker 4: arts he's inspirational in film, dance, music, literature, visual arts.
Speaker 4: He's referenced quite frequently. But then also these groups, they
Speaker 4: all exist today. Some exist in a multiplicity. So there's
Speaker 4: lots of groups that call themselves the AA, there's a
Speaker 4: few groups that call themselves the OTO, and so there
Speaker 4: are conflicts within their community of participants who argue about
Speaker 4: the legitimacy of any one group or another. And then
Speaker 4: you also have the Noosta Catholic Church, which continues. There
Speaker 4: are those who participate in the NaSTA Catholic Church outside
Speaker 4: of the OTIO context, and since the late twentieth century,
Speaker 4: the Nosta Catholic Church within the OTO. Although they were independent,
Speaker 4: the memberships were overlapping in at one point they were
Speaker 4: combined and so there's a confluence between participation in the
Speaker 4: OTO in its initiatory degrees also necessitates even in nominally
Speaker 4: participation in the Nosta Catholic Church. And so that as
Speaker 4: you go through the initiations, you're actually being initiated in
Speaker 4: the OTO as well as receiving titles within the Gnosta
Speaker 4: Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So ultimately, uh, within his life when he passes away,
Speaker 2: what was his.
Speaker 3: Status at that point? Was he.
Speaker 2: Like well revered? Was he doing okay financially or was
Speaker 2: he struggling? Or like you know, in this sort of
Speaker 2: classic not not talking about from a spiritual perspective, but
Speaker 2: just from like a how well was he being taken
Speaker 2: care of at the end of his life? Was was
Speaker 2: was he successful? In that sort of capitalistic.
Speaker 3: Perspective where no, not at all? Okay?
Speaker 4: He he basically died living in a small rented room
Speaker 4: of a person's house.
Speaker 1: In in England.
Speaker 5: Relatively poor.
Speaker 4: He would get visitors, but his organizations were in shambles
Speaker 4: if they even existed at all. He was trying to
Speaker 4: find people to carry on his legacy. He was somewhat successful.
Speaker 4: He did have a successor in the OTO, a guy
Speaker 4: named Carl Grimer, who continued the OTO in the AA.
Speaker 4: Grimmer was much more interested in the AA, particularly as
Speaker 4: far as the EGC. He had some who participated and
Speaker 4: were interested in that, And then there were a smattering
Speaker 4: of people who became involved and interested in Crawley's work
Speaker 4: towards the end of his life that carried on his
Speaker 4: work after he passed away in December of nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3: And what did he die of? Or do we know?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's it is known off the top of my head.
Speaker 4: I don't remember. I think it was very mundane, just
Speaker 4: a normal kind of illness.
Speaker 1: I'd have to look it up, but something like pneumonia
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, one thing we should keep in mind is
Speaker 4: that he was a heroin addict for almost his whole life.
Speaker 4: He did times try to stop, short periods of times.
Speaker 4: He was more successful than others, but he was taking
Speaker 4: heroin up to his death, and so a lot of
Speaker 4: his time, you know, was engaged in that kind of activity.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure it's complicated too, I think when there's so
Speaker 2: many of these rituals that involve opening up your mind
Speaker 2: with drugs, and I gotta suspect if you use heroin.
Speaker 2: It's it doesn't take much to get you completely addicted.
Speaker 3: It's it's yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I think another context that we have to keep
Speaker 4: in mind is at the time that he started using heroin,
Speaker 4: it was legal and it was actually seen as a
Speaker 4: viable medication for the treatment of asthma, and that was
Speaker 4: a condition that he had, and so heroin was prescribed.
Speaker 4: It was only later when that ended and medical science saw,
Speaker 4: you know, the repercussions of people who became addicted to
Speaker 4: heroin and the fact that there were better solutions, that
Speaker 4: they stopped seeing it as.
Speaker 5: A proper treatment. But by then it.
Speaker 4: Was the damage was already done and who knows how
Speaker 4: many other people.
Speaker 5: And cocaine was also prescribed.
Speaker 4: For illness, and so the drugs that we think are
Speaker 4: illegal today and bad in some context or not, that's
Speaker 4: a relatively recent phenomenon, right, right, And the impact of
Speaker 4: those drugs was not well known until you know, well
Speaker 4: into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Well, it's important to mind listeners that heroin, heroin was
Speaker 2: a brand name.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's yeah, it was, it was. Yeah. I've
Speaker 3: seen a lot of the.
Speaker 2: Packaging for heroin and cocaine being used in Friday things,
Speaker 2: including Coca Cola. The coca part of Coca Cola used
Speaker 2: to be from the Coca right right.
Speaker 4: I mean you could go to your farming as system
Speaker 4: and pick up cocaine pills like nothing.
Speaker 5: I mean they were cheap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2: Well, John, I wow, I feel like we could just
Speaker 2: keep talking about this, but I I probably do need
Speaker 2: to wind down here. There is uh this is this
Speaker 2: will seem like an unsecuoror, but for regular listeners, this
Speaker 2: is a thing I try to ask people who come
Speaker 2: on the show.
Speaker 3: This one common closing question. Are you ready?
Speaker 5: M hmm?
Speaker 3: What's your favorite monster?
Speaker 5: The Creature from the Black Lagoon?
Speaker 3: Is it really awesome?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, I used to.
Speaker 4: My father was in the military, and I grew up
Speaker 4: for a period of time and during the elementary years
Speaker 4: in Honolulu, and they used to have a creature double
Speaker 4: feature on the weekends and they would do a Godzilla
Speaker 4: film and some other old, you know, horror film, and
Speaker 4: I just absolutely.
Speaker 1: Loved watching the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 3: Have you managed to go see The Shape of Water?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Not yet.
Speaker 3: Oh, you should totally go see that.
Speaker 2: I think you'll get a real kick out of it.
Speaker 2: It's it's not directly from that tradition, but it certainly
Speaker 2: has been heavily impacted. Girmo del Toro does a fantastic size.
Speaker 2: It's a great story, but it's one of the most
Speaker 2: beautiful films I've ever seen. But a great gill Man,
Speaker 2: so it's really really fun. I think he would really
Speaker 2: get a kick out of it. So check it out
Speaker 2: if you get a chance.
Speaker 1: We'll do We'll do.
Speaker 3: This is good.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me on the show, and I
Speaker 4: appreciate everybody's time in listening.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time. This is such
Speaker 2: a complicated topic which I think people will have a
Speaker 2: pretty good handle on now. And obviously I'll have to
Speaker 2: edit this down just a little bit, but this is
Speaker 2: really good material. And thank you so much for helping
Speaker 2: us contextualize the role of Crowley within this larger esoterica,
Speaker 2: because as it fits in with this magical research stuff,
Speaker 2: I think it's really important. And I don't think he's
Speaker 2: well understood. He's much more commonly a pop culture sort
Speaker 2: of reference point than a better understood sort of figure
Speaker 2: within Western history, you know, So I really I think
Speaker 2: you're going to help people sort of clear some mystery up.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to do so.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on moorns Trutor.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith, and today you heard an interview with
Speaker 2: John L. Crow about the life of Alistair Crowley. I
Speaker 2: hope you'll check out the links in the show notes
Speaker 2: at MonsterTalk dot org, where there's a lot of information
Speaker 2: if you'd like to dig deeper into Crawley's strange but
Speaker 2: interesting life. He somehow got a reputation for outsized evil
Speaker 2: and wickedness. Yet in a century that saw mass human eradication,
Speaker 2: carpet bombing, unlawful medical experiments, global wars, and nuclear bombs,
Speaker 2: somehow his life by comparison seems almost quaint. But he
Speaker 2: sure seems to have messed up a lot of lives,
Speaker 2: including his own. Often we have higher aspirations than our
Speaker 2: ability or fortunes allow us to execute. I certainly see
Speaker 2: the appeal of a philosophy that talks about will. According
Speaker 2: to many interpretations, when Crowley said do what thou wilt,
Speaker 2: he was talking about living for one's true purpose, following
Speaker 2: your will with purpose, not doing whatever pops in your head,
Speaker 2: dividing your true purpose. But despite the heroic stories we
Speaker 2: hear about loners with incredible force of will and how
Speaker 2: they accomplish amazing things, it always seems to me that
Speaker 2: when you dig a little deeper, more has actually been
Speaker 2: accomplished by the cooperation of people who share a vision
Speaker 2: than by individuals who seek credit and accolades. But this
Speaker 2: has been a show about Alistair Crowley, not his teachings.
Speaker 2: There are some links in the show notes if you
Speaker 2: want to learn more about that. Monster Talk is an
Speaker 2: official podcast of Skeptic Magazine, but the opinions expressed on
Speaker 2: this show are those of myself and my guests and
Speaker 2: do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Skeptic Magazine or
Speaker 2: the Skeptic society. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of
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